George Will: For Romney ‘conservatism is a second language’

On Laura Ingraham’s radio program on Friday, Washington Post columnist and ABC’s “This Week” regular George Will said Mitt Romney is “still learning” what it means to be a conservative.

Ingraham lamented that the Romney campaign strategy seems unwilling to embrace the frustration conservatives feel toward government and government dependency in the United States. According to Will, increasing Americans dependency on government is actually a campaign strategy for Democrats.

“We are reaching the tipping point where the majority of Americans are recipients of government programs,” Will said. “Heavens, one-in-seven of Americans is on food stamps today. The gamble — it’s really a gamble, the tactic of the Democratic Party is to run up the dependency ratio in this country until you get 50-60 percent of Americans dependent on the government or at least one, or often in multiple ways, at which point they figure the party of government will always win.”

But that same frustration isn’t reach Romney, Will said. Will explained the former Massachusetts governor is attempting to learn why this conservatives while on the job, which is a tough thing to do in the middle of a campaign.

“Let us face it, we do not have — Mitt Romney does not have the feeling, the visceral philosophically sound feeling for what’s wrong with the progressive movement in this country,” Will said. “He knows. I mean, he’s a good man, a good fellow. He’d be a much better president than the one we’ve got. But, he doesn’t — what I’ve said before about him is conservatism is a second language for him. And he is still learning it. And it’s hard to learn this thing in the midst of a high-stakes presidential campaign.”